A new international research published on The Astrophysical Journal Letters, with the Solar Orbiter/Metis and the Parker Solar Probe instruments, unveils the secrets of the Sun’s atmosphere.
The first observational estimate of the heating rate in the slowly expanding solar corona has been obtained. The analysis exploits the simultaneous remote and local observations of the same coronal plasma volume and relies on the basic solar wind magnetohydrodynamic equations.
Energy losses are a minor fraction of the solar wind energy flux, since most of the energy dissipation that feeds the heating and acceleration of the coronal flow occurs much closer to the Sun than the heights probed in the present study (6,6-13,3 solar radius). The observations refined the turbulence-based modeling of coronal heating and the subsequent solar wind acceleration.
The stimulation of the random movements of a fluid, be it a gas or a liquid, let the energy be transferred on an increasingly smaller scale, eventually transforming into heat. In the case of the solar corona, the fluid is also magnetized and therefore the stored magnetic energy is available to be converted into heat.
At the smallest scales, it allows fluctuations to interact with elementary particles, especially protons, and heat them.
References:
https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ace112
